Who is the team?
One of FIIG’s differentiating factors is maintaining a specific Research Team whose role is to provide support to our clients and help them understand the companies behind the bonds we are offering as part of our services.
While mainstream media will provide comprehensive news reports on some of the largest issuers (such as the major banks or the largest ASX-listed companies that are active in the bond market), many bonds are also issued by private companies for which the information flow is a lot more sporadic. To deliver on this endeavour, FIIG has put together a four-member team with a strong mix of experience and expertise.
Heading the team is Thomas Jacquot, who has been at FIIG since March 2018 and has over 20 years experience in credit and fixed income markets in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. Thomas has built his team to make sure we have experts across the different sectors we invest in. Andrew Mayes joined Research in June 2018 with a deep knowledge of the Banking and Financial sectors after 8 years at S&P Global Ratings.
Bonnie Corbett joined from another team within FIIG in June 2017, putting her Economics degree to good use and building her skills to cover the Infrastructure and Commodities sectors. A recent opening in the line-up gave Sriyanthi Narayanan an opportunity to join in early 2021 having previously applied her skills in bank and corporate Treasury issuing bonds and she’s now putting the shoe on the other foot and brings her knowledge of the Finance and Property sectors.
What do we do?
Collectively, the Research Team provides insights on over 110 issuers, with each member covering a specific range of names. On any given week, team members will opine on anything from company results to operational updates, consent requests and provide thoughts on relative value. The Research team are actively involved in supporting FIIG-originated new issues by providing in depth research reports for all new deals.
The Research Team are also responsible for the DirectBonds and RMBS offerings, actively monitoring the market for new opportunities and compiling collateral.
On an annual basis, the team prepares a Credit Outlook. This four part series provides their thoughts and insights on what to expect in markets over the coming twelve months. This is released during January, including a Macro Outlook and reports on the Financial, Property and Commodities sectors.
Finally, the Research Team spend a lot of time interacting directly with our clients, to give them insights on any given company, helping them with corporate actions and more generally ensuring that they have a good understanding of their bond investments.
So what do we do when we're not at work?
Perhaps it is the nature of the personalities that are attracted to a Research role, but all four of the team are cooks. Thomas more experimentally, Andrew with fire and Bonnie with a glass of wine in hand!
The three of the team with children also spend most of their free time ferrying their various aged children to social events.
As far as something left field would go, again the team are similar in their desires for a superpower – travel of various kinds is the theme: either time-travelling to satisfy his love for history (Thomas) or teleportation to save on travel time (Andrew and Bonnie), or simply super-speed to help Sriyanthi do all the things she doesn’t have time for currently!
While the Research Team publishes regular updates which are sent directly to your inbox, feel free reach out to them for any questions you may have.